Group items tagged

This website reviews the effects of play in early childhood education.

Kristin Gaines September 11, 2011 Overview- The purpose of this site is to inform its audience about play based learning in early childhood. The intended audience is both parents and teachers of young children. This site does not contain a list of available resources, but contains valuable information. In my opinion, this site is very useful if you want to learn about the teaching methods used in early childhood today. Content- Upon rating the content of this site, I found that it met the almost all the criteria for content. The site was only lacking in interactivity and links to other relevant sites. One problem I did find, was that the site was a bit biased, so that makes it not as relevant. Design- This site is not fancy in any way, nor does it catch your attention, but it contains the vital pieces that make up a working website. It is organized and clear, although there is not much content in the site. Either way, this site met most of the criteria for design and is a good and easy to use site.

This website is for Early Childhood teachers and of them to get free lesson plans, units, and materials. Overall, this is a really cool website. I would use this website for lesson plan ideas and it is current information. It was last copyrighted in 2013-2014. They have a ton of different websites that teachers can go to and get different ideas. Also, there are blogs that you can follow to get more ideas. This website also includes the different degrees that you can get in different states. All the information is current and relevant for early childhood education. This website is very plain. However, I think that it is appropriate for the audience that it is for. It is professional in a way that you know it is reliable. This website is very nice and full of a ton of good information.

Overview: This website is a great resource to use when creating classroom rules in early childhood. The site provides information on the different languages children have and then provides guidelines for helping students create the rules with you. It is a new way of looking at classroom rules and should definitely be read by teachers before making their class rules. Content: The content of this site is good. This information is creditable and easy to understand. It fulfills its purpose in providing ways to create rules in the classroom. The content can be quickly determined. Design: This site is a pdf document so it is not visually appealing at all. There are not any pictures or supporting links. The page does load quickly and is very easy to navigate. Aside from not presenting material visually the site does present the material in an organized manner.

This website discusses the role of play in early childhood education

Kristin Gaines September 11, 2011 Overview- Overall, this is a very up to date and useful website. The purpose of this site is to learn about early childhood and what the research is telling us. The intended audience for this site is parents, teachers, and theorists who are interested in young children and how they develop. Content- The content of this site is very up to date and the information providers are credible as well. At a fist glance, you can tell what the basic content is and that it will be useful. Design- The design of this website is pleasing to the eye, although it is not a busy web page. The site has a clear table of contents and is extremely easy to navigate. There are many links associated with this site and they are all working and useful to the content of the site.

This website takes a look at some ideological approaches towards childhood obesity. The article on the website is intended for adults who work with children in any aspect. The author, James Hamblin notes that individual poor decisions are an extreme reductionist approach. The idea is that we can come up with programs in our schools that encourage healthy active lifestyles and that these programs, if effective, will help reduce childhood obesity and promote general overall healthy outcomes for children. One of the ideas expressed and refuted is that obesity is a loosing battle. The epidemic of childhood obesity has grown, this is true. The website and article are showing that our education and government society are concerned and want to help. No one situation is to blame, as suggested by the article. Sugar and soda pops are mentioned but abolition of any of these things clearly is not targeted as a solution. While no particular solution or method is presented, the idea is to keep thinking and not to dismiss this subject. I thought this was a good read and had helpful information for me. Knowing that others still take this problem seriously helps myself and those I can influence to remain aware and able to contribute in some way. This site is good for any person that wants to stay informed of efforts being made among multiple communities.

Ramon J. Sandoval September 1, 2010 Website Evaluation 1 Site Title: Enchanted Learning URL: www.enchantedlearning.com Authors of website: Jeananda Col and Mitchell Spector Subject: Elementary Education Content Summary This website is great for teachers looking for curriculum material for elementary school students. It is broken down into categories making it easy for the teacher to navigate the website and obtain subjects specific to their desired projects. The content appears to be complete and is regularly updated. If any problems with the site are experienced the site has a page dedicated to addressing these problems. Design summary The home page of the website downloads fast. The links within the site come up quickly. The information on the pages is easy to understand and navigate through. There is an appendix on the left hand side of the page to help guide you through the site and take you to your desired subject. This site has sufficient information for the teacher to browse through and select what will work best for them. The material is updated regularly and has a link directing you to the newest projects. If any problems occur with the site then a link is provided at the top of the page to deal with any concerns. Overview This is a site I will be put in my favorites. For an elementary school teacher it is a good resource. It has a variety of subjects and suggested projects for them. It has suggestions for early childhood activities to give children a jump start in their education. I would recommend this site to parents that are interested in enhancing their child's education. It is very user friendly.

Overview: This site was created by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and is intended for teacher, professionals or parents to find out more about early childhood education. The website discusses the Association's beliefs in early childhood education, but also why it is important, how it can be well executed, and what parents can do at home to help their children. There are also numerous outside resources listed on the website to other sites, books and journals relevant to early childhood education. Content: The purpose of the site is immediately identifiable, and the information about the association and the creation of the website can be easily and clearly found. The sources of information are highly reliable, and all the outside links are highly relevant. The information is kept up to date and the site is very professionally kept. The site is easy to navigate, and all information can be easily found. Design: The design of the site clearly represents the association's ideals and purpose. It is very professional, yet also creatively displayed. The information is readily available and catches your eye. Each graphic and link is relevant to the overall site. The site is essentially free of advertisements, making it appear even more professional and clean. For this website, the design plays a large part in the successful presentation of their information.

This is a poor website about early childhood education

Kristin Gaines September 11, 2011 Overview- The purpose of the site is to inform users of children's play in early childhood education. The intended audience is parents and teachers. There are no available resources for this site and all the sources used are very outdated. This is not a credible website and should not be used. Content- The content of this website is outdated by over 13 years. It has not been updated since it was originally created and there is no way to contact the author of the article on the website. The purpose of this website is not reached, because the content can't be used since it is old data and research that the information was based on. Design- The design of this site is about as poor as its content. The site is lacking about everything a site needs to be considered a website. The only content on the whole webpage is a very outdated article about children's play. There is no table of contents, sponsor, contact person, multimedia, or links. Nor has the site ever been updated. Overall, the design of this site is lacking in every aspect possible.

Katrina Swanson February 26, 2013 Overview: This website was created by a kindergarten teacher who wanted to share her ideas and lesson plans from inside her own classroom. It is intended for the kindergarten aged level but teacher access only. The teacher looks at the material and then creates her own ideas from it. The site gives tons of lesson plans for every day of the month and even extra fun things to do with kindergarteners. Content: The content of this site is very helpful to kindergarten or early childhood teachers. It is easy to determine what the site contains and also that it is created by a former kindergarten teacher. There is contact info available to contact her if there are any questions or ideas that come up. She provides updated content to the site daily and the links are all working correctly. The site is intended for others to get information as well as entertainment from to use in their classes. Design: The design of the website is very fun and entertaining. It includes lots of visuals of example lesson plans, words, links to different places on the site, videos and even has printables! The pages load efficiently and the links are correctly labeled. The information is organized in a way that everyone is able to view easily. It is a great website for any kindergarten teacher to have to spice up their classrooms!!

Overview: This website is designed mostly for teachers, but can definitely extend out to parents. There is information ranging from developmental scales all the way to curriculum ideas. Content: The content of this site is good. The site is created by scholastic, which is a reliable company/sponsor of many things academic. The purpose of the site is very clear and all the links work well and take you to pages of strong/helpful information. Design: The design of the website is great. The homepage is attractive and the sidebar links are easy to navigate. Everything is well organized and each tab is full of relevant information.

Lacey Boyles April 15, 2015 This website ran very smoothly. I was able to find what I was looking for and also browse other articles easily. The intended audience is anyone who is interested in early childhood development. The purpose of this site is to give advice to parents/teachers, and also ideas on games/activities/art. Over all this is a very well set up website. This site is set up very well. Things are easy to locate as they have blogs set up in different categories. From what I read through the authors grammar and spelling is all correct. They try and set up two blogs a week, I would say they stay pretty current. I did not have any problem clicking on different blogs/articles, I was able to access all that I clicked on. The only thing I think they could add is links to other websites that relate to what they are talking about in a specific blog/article. When first clicking on this website it is very clear as to where you are. The site is nothing fancy so it does not take away from the content. On the homepage there is not too much going on and is easy to read. There is a variety of different information that would help with many different questions. From what I read through articles seem to be up to date and there is not a lot of very old material. This is a website that I will be returning to in the future.

Content Summary: The site at first is a little hard to determine the basic content of the site unless you knew about the program before visiting the site. The sponsors for the site are clearly identified on the site and each one had a separate link for them. The site did no have posted anything on the information currency. However, the information on the site is talking about the program therefore; the information does not need to be updated as much. The site met all the information quality standards for the evaluation. The site was well organized and the purpose of the site was clear and easy to understand. Design Summary: The Growing Up Wild web site is very neat and fresh looking. The site and the links on the page downloaded efficiently. All of the text was well organized and easy to read. Navigating around on this site and moving form topic to topic was easy. The few graphics they displayed made a contribution to the site and was the right amount to attract the eye but not take away from the information. There was also availability of further information provided for those who want it. Overview: Growing Up Wild is a site that explains an early childhood education program. This site is for teachers or other educators. This program focuses on having students explore wildlife, nature and the world around them. It also has great activities for students to participate in and learn useful information. The site was very well designed, easy to use, and contained useful information.

Provides ideas for teachers to teach their early childhood classes shapes. This site provides activities to do this. These activities can help your students have more knowledge about shapes .

This site tells you everything you need to know about Montessori teaching methods.

Kristin Gaines September 11, 2011 Overview- Overall, this site is very useful and is designed to teach users about Montessori teaching methods. The intended audience is teachers, but it would be a useful site for parents as well. The available resources are all relating to the Montessori Company and not to other links. This website is definitely useful and is a good site to use when exploring teaching methods of early childhood. Content- The content of this site is very reliable. It is updated frequently; the last time it was updated was just 6 days ago. The only problem with this website's content is that it is biased towards Montessori teaching. This is not a huge problem though, because any user would know that it is biased because the web site developer is Montessori. Design- I could not find any faults in the design of this site. Everything from the table of contents section to the obvious copyright date, this site lays out everything a user needs in order to navigate through its contents. I would recommend this site to others, because it is laid out so neat.

This website is for Kindergarten and earlier teachers for art class. It provides lesson plans for teachers to teach art. This website does not look professional. It has a lot of popups that come up when I am trying to navigate through the website. It was copyrighted in 1997-2014. This website is kind of useful. I found that the lesson plans were kind of confusing. They weren't actual lesson plans. They were more of suggestions that you could do for a lesson plan but they said that they were lesson plans. This website would be helpful for ideas not actual lesson plans. The overall design of the website was easy to use and navigate. However, it was not professional. At first this website does not look reliable, but when you keep looking they have some really cool idea. I would probably not use this website in the future for lesson plans.

story creation in the cloud

Jade Line April 14, 2015 This article is about different ways to have children finger paint. It provides ideas on how to stay away from the mess of painting and different projects students can do with painting. The attended audience for this article is early childhood/ elementary teachers. This website has all of the information needed for an easy set up and easy clean up. I enjoy this website because it is giving fast and effective ways to get the job done, which saves time. This website is credible and the author is known and is a credible education professor at a university in Pennsylvania. Although, the last time it was revised was in 2008. The content in this site is a little jumbled and it gets confusing to read at times. The purpose is clear and well stated. The author talks about how important setting up this messy project is for an easy take down and clean up. She also highlights in this article different "mess-free" activities you can do with painting. The design of this website is not very appealing. It isn't very colorful and doesn't attract the readers eye at first. There are no pictures to catch the attention of someone either. It is just a bunch of different paragraphs with a few bold headings. There are links provided to other areas on the website, but doesn't directly relate to finger painting. Overall I think the layout of this article isn't very neat and put together. There were no ads on this website to distract the reader.

Katie Hertel 1-23-2010 Overview: PBS educational games, videos and activities is an educational website for younger early childhood children. It teaches through many of the popular kids education television shows such as Barney, Author, Sesame Street, Dragon Tales, etc. There are available resources to parents and teachers to make sure this website is teaching their children in an effective way. Overall, my impression of this website was that it is an easy effective way to entertain your children through educational ways that are fun and entertaining. Content: As I explored on the website I found that it was easy to navigate. There are links formed as circles that have a picture of the educational animated television shows that kids today are familiar with. When clicking on these links it pulls up that shows official website which has clippings of the show, fun activities, and games related to that specific show that help younger children grow familiar with what they are learning outside of just the game. The information that is taught can be a reliable way to help teach children. Along with reliable material it has supported detail of the sites publication information. Design: This site is well designed and easy to understand how to access what kind of educational experience you want. It is very appealing, especially to a child's eye. Not very many irrelevant advertisement interruptions appear to be a problem. Although a lot of sources on this website prove to be a safe and reliable way of helping children learn, it is also obvious that it is for money purposes as well.

This website is an educational game site for kids. It is mainly based on PBS kids television series but it provides games in all different subject areas and has links for parents and teachers on "how to raise spectacular children". There are not a lot of outside links on this site to access other information, but the authors or the Public Broadcasting Systems seem like reliable authors and the content is great! I don't think a lack of outside sources takes away from the site at all. The content of this site is very educational and informational for students and would be easy to incorporate into lesson plans for an interactive way for students to test their knowledge. One thing that may be a set back is that the games are mainly based off of PBS kids TV series so it may be distracting to the students to have their favorite episodes one click away. The site is sponsered by PBS though so no extra ads or additional distractions are present! The site also has the terms of use and privacy conditions easily accessible and provide log-ins for students so that they can save their work and progress for later which is great! Each game also provides easy step by step instructions as well that can be read or heard so students can get the most out of their gaming experiences. The design of the website is great as well. The home page not only includes interactive links that move when you hold your mouse over the top of them, but it also has audio as well to bring students in. The games are very interactive and there are so many that every student should be able to find something that they enjoy doing! The colors are bright and the navigation is incredibly easy which makes students want to come back for more. Any questions that they may have are answered within the games which also helps subdue any frustrations that may arise. Overall, a great site for kids that would be easy to incorporate into lessons!

Taylor Pilch 09/09/2011

Taylor Pilch 09/09/2011 Overview: The purpose of this site is to give teacher resources such as lesson plans for special education from early childhood all the way to grade 12. The intended audience is for special education teachers. There are many resources such as discussion forums, teaching themes, and things to print out for students. Overall, my impression of the site was good and I think it could be useful to teachers. Content: This website had a lot of strengths for the content of it. It was simple to navigate and to see what was available. It also had the information providers listed at the bottom of the website. The information quality was also very good. As for weaknesses, I found a link that did not work, and I could not find the date of the last revision of the website. Design: The design of this website was pretty good overall. It was not very attractive, but it was pretty easy to navigate. You could choose which grade level you wanted to read about and go right to it. As for the weaknesses, I am not sure how up-to-date this website is because I could not find the date of last revision, and I also found a link that did not work.